My last stop of this wonderful trip in SE Asia was the Philippine islands. I had not plan to go until my Pinoy (Philippino) friend, an hour before catching the train to Xi’an told me the plane tickets were on sale, 500 RMB = $79 USD and convinced us to go! This was the reason we lost the train! ha. Nonetheless I do not regret it!

View from our place. Photo by King Choi (our host)

Our first stop was Manila, where the second biggest mall of Asia is! I didn’t even get to go through the whole place, and it was probably better since we were buying in almost every store we walked in. Our dearest friend was our host and as a good friend he took good care of us. He showed us to every mall in the city! Was it necessary? I don’t know, but it was fun! Manila is certainly the best place to shop in Asia. It reminds me a lot of the States, everyone speaks English. But in Manila they are way more polite, no offense USA but everywhere we went the service staff opened the door for us, waited by our side until we decided what to order, always smiled, and even went out to get a taxi for us and held the umbrella open all the way to the car. On top of that, a sales associate even put on me a pair of heels that I wanted to try. Where do you get this kind of service?! I felt like I was worth a million dollars, haha.

Jeepney, public transportation in Manila. This reminds me of Mexico =)

On the weekend we went to see the smallest active volcano in the world called Taal. Is is about two hours from Manila in the island of Luzon. That day it was so foggy that we could barely see the road. Unfortunately, when we got the view spot all we could not see anything. Our luck changed a couple of hours later when the wind blew the fog away and saw the volcano for only a couple of seconds.

Taal Volcano

We then left to Boracay, one of the best islands in the Philippines. This island is full of beauty, nice people, and fun. We did almost every water sport we could in a period of three days; snorkeling, scuba diving, helmet diving, parasailing, and something new called fly fish. This is the craziest thing I have ever tried besides bungee jumping, and yes, I fell off the raft! We didn’t get a video of this but if you don’t know what fly fish is check out this video. Because of the winds we didn’t get to try cliff diving but I shall go back to my paradise to complete this adventure.